adventures of a belly dancing acupuncturist

This started as a travelogue to Turkey in the fall '05 so that I wouldn't have to send multiple emails and postcards. I'm still adding anecdotes as I remember them, but it's morphing into a "rant to the ether" spot. Stay, or go. This is my bit of space to do with what I wish.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Still a bit worn out

Why did I exhaust myself yesterday?

I can't even begin to count the number of people I met over the years who have either a complete misunderstanding of acupuncture and oriental medicine, or have had a bad experience by a poorly trained medical doctor or chiropractor (with limitted hours of training, the equivalent of one of my 11 terms).

To have the gal with needle issues walk out with a positive experience; while she may never come back she will at least have good things to say about the medicine and the experience (and me), that makes it all worth it. This is one more person saying good things about AOM, one less person with such a bad experience that she'll never try it again and say bad things about it to anyone who will listen. That's better advertising than any of us in the field can buy.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Final Tally

Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Day

It's 10:30 and I am on #4 of 12 free treatments that I am doing to promote the medicine and to promote my practice. 2 of the first 3 are looking like potential returnees, at the very least as short term/occasional clients. The current one is in a position to provide great referrals. 2 others due later have already expressed interest in pursuing extended treatment.

For each person who schedules a follow up today I'm going to donate $18 (chai) to Angie Paccione, as I've not given her any $ yet this election cycle. And I'll probably due the same for anyone from today who chooses to reschdule at a later time, but calls before election day.

Hope the person coming up from the state capitol later is one who is pleased rather than perturbed by my political signs!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

What temptation?

Dear Mr. Temptation creator,

I repect you for admiring the art of belly dance to the point that you made a whole vanity project for your wife that you're going to try and sell. You even got 4 excellent dancers to fill out the bill (let's not go into the openers, all I have to say on that one is the sword dancer really deserved to be there, that's all). But from what I saw of the show (I gave up after the intermission), your aspirations to a less conservative/high class concept fell short. Not because of the dancers themselves, although your wife gave us a great crotch shot while writhing on the floor at Captain 80's feet, but because of the stereotypical imagery hanging over the whole show.

Captain America hijacked what was once a great Middle Eastern genre musical combo and turned it into a retro cheeseball 80's synthpop goth lite solo project. Not quite Nik Kershaw or Howard Jones, but more in the white guy from the Thompson Twins look (with more hair), but solo. Yeah, that cheesy. He acted as an MC, fidling a bit with his synths to tweak, to annoying effect, the prerecorded music used by the dancers (which was much easier on the ears than his partially live originals).

Then there were the lovely photos on the screen behind the dancers. A mixture of the entire photo content of The Serpent of the Nile, and some really badly taken snapshots. The lighter the costumes, the more they picked up the projected images (classic amatuer hour imagey here people).

So I didn't last into the second half; hunger and Captain 80's drove me out of there. It's a shame as the 3 out of town dancers, along with Sadie, were absolutely fantastic and Rachid and Zahara provided real musicianship. And only some of the audience knew about the preceeding Boofest, a benefit show, and chose to attend that as well (at least they taped us so that we can have a record of the performances).

The REAL Temptation came at 2am. Along with a neighbor and 2 of her friends, I managed to sneak in a back entrance to the new Libeskind wing of the Denver Art Museum in their 35 hour marathon rather than go to the front and get tickets for 4 or 5am. 2 hours, exhausted and tipsy, wandering around the new wing, getting vertigo looking down the the center open space from the 4th floor, unexpectedly running into several people I know, enjoying the dj at the foot of the stairs and dancing across that floor at 4am (and being up for over 22 hours straight by the time I got home and to sleep).